An area of interest to an enterprise, centered on a major resource, product or activity of the enterprise and about which the enterprise may wish to hold data.
A subject area is a major subdivision of the data objects (e.g., entity types and attribute types) that the business uses. It is defined initially during an Information Strategy Planning (ISP) study to aid in the finding of entity types, or as part of the definition of a Business Area Analysis (BAA) project. Once the entity types are found, the areas are then useful as broad groupings of entity types. It is best to keep the subject areas simple, so that they consist of only those entity types and interrelationships that pertain to a particular subject entity type.
An analysis project may involve several subject areas. For example, a sales analysis project may consider the Sales, Personnel, Customer and Product subject areas. As the analysis progresses, you will find that a subject area consists of a collection of entity types and the relationships between them.
Hierarchy of Subject Areas in the BAA
In Business Area Analysis, complexity is added, so it may be useful to form a hierarchy of subject areas either for presentation, or for the management of effort and the understanding of the model.
Example of Lowest-Level Subject Area
Example of the Customer Subject Area
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